December 2006

I’m really not sure what this guy was thinking. It’s not the blue t-shirt and blue tartan kilt combo that makes me wonder, it’s the brown cowboy boots.

I’ve been soundly chastised for being a lazy shit in regards to wanting the pizza delivered rather than retrieving the pizza myself. I won’t argue this point and in fact agree with that sentiment — up to a point.

The city I live in is truly a bedroom community. It is a small valley ringed with hills. There are no commercial zones within the valley at all. The nearest strip mall, which hosts said pizza joint by the way, is outside the valley only a mile or so away as the crow flies but possibly double to triple that by road. You must also understand that this bedroom community I call home was well and truly farmland before the eeeevil developers came, in fact there are still some working farms close by. If I chose to, I can walk two blocks and say hello to some dairy cows.

The streets in this burg are all two lane, even the new ones built to support the development. It can take 15 to 20 minutes to get out the main drag, Sunnyside. Not all the time, mind you, and usually not when I’m driving, but the speed limits are all set for residential, and Oregonians have this incredibly annoying habit of actually honoring the speed limit that is lacking in those of who came from the concrete jungles of Orange County and Los Angeles. There are no four lane Culvers or Irvine Valley Drives around to efficiently shuttle people to and fro.

So, yeah, I wanted the pizza delivered. And yeah, I fully understood the situation from the pizza guy’s perspective. He didn’t want to get stiffed with a bad check. Further, I was prepared to let it all go when, rather than apologizing and maybe offering a buck off if I came it to get it myself (hey, it could happen) as incentive to get my custom, he puts his back up.

And THAT was my central point all along. Even if I’m being a dick in the situation, he should have stayed polite throughout and apologized profusely and not budged. I would have just let it go and done something else for dinner, maybe I would have even sucked it up and driven in to get the pizza. Alas, that didn’t happen and I get to relate a story that shows a little bit of the bad side of me to illustrate what I hope is a larger point regarding customers service.

Then again, maybe not.

“Hello?”

“May I speak to Roger Bixby?” A woman with a thick slavic accent.

“Speaking.”

“Mr. Bixby, I’m so and so from [my cell phone provider I won't name but rhymes with Flint Rex Bell], and I something something something.” Her accent was quite thick and for some reason she was talking very softly. Regardless, once I heard the company name I immediately tuned her out and was thinking how fast I could get her off the phone with out using my potty mouth. I had paused the show I was watching. I now looked at the angry glare of Timothy Oliphant frozen in 60 inch flat screen clarity, an image which captured my mood perfectly.

“I’m sorry, I’m busy right now can you call back at another time?” The strain of saying that in an even, polite tone of voice nearly killed me. The phone creaked from the pressure my grip exerted.

“I will only take two minutes of your time.”

“Well, I’m watching a DVR of my favorite show and I would appreciate it if you would call back later this afternoon.”

“You can pause the DVR, can’t you? This will only take two minutes.”

THAT was the exact WRONG thing to say to me.

I was amazed at her impertinence. First she calls me on a Saturday morning, MY free time, and she had the bad luck to interrupt me while I was watching the second to last episode of Deadwood, a show of unparalleled quality, with many fine attributes, not the least of which is the show’s ability to use the word ‘fuck’ with such eloquence, and whose large ensemble cast provides a consistently mesmerizing performance in every moment of every episode. But for the liberal use of the many expletives, the Fetching Mrs. Bixby would be as hooked on the show as I am. Regardless, I don’t begrudge the caller her bad luck in timing her call. I DO, however, begrudge her insistence on continuing the call after I politely asked her to call back. Therefore:

“I’m sorry. I would expect you to show due consideration in honoring my request,” I said, pressing the End button.

I suspect that had I NOT been watching Deadwood, my eloquence would have been in short supply. Deadwood is written with a richness of language that is a large part of the appeal of the show to me. I can look beyond the curse words because of this. In fact, after about the second episode, I stopped hearing the expletives at all, or rather they ceased to shock me.

The woman’s pushiness brings to mind a thought I’ve had regarding those who work in service jobs, such as telemarketing. Specifically, the lack of understanding of what the word ’service’ means. For me, working in a service job means the person approaches customers with a high level of politeness and respect and goes out of his or her way to fulfill all of the customer’s reasonable requests. And while interacting with the customer, the person would not say anything to anger the customer. This sales call should have ended when I asked her to call back, yet she pushed me, further angering me, which has the effect of thinking I should change cell phone providers.

Working in a service job is hard, certainly, and very few can do it well. Yes, there are customers for whom no amount of effort is pleasing and having to put up with such is certainly a chore. For that reason I have a high degree of respect for those who do aspire to a service job, nay career, and who clearly strive to do it well. The best example of this is Fletcher Jones Motor Cars in Irvine. I was blown away at how much the Fetching Mrs. Bixby and I were made to feel like we were the ONLY buyers on the lot, how much we were catered to in regards to our comfort duing the three or four hours it took to buy the car we did. This despite the fact that we were not buying an E or S class super insanely expensive model.

On the other hand, I have less than contempt for those people who are in a service job and who treat the customer as, at best, an inconvenience. A few months ago, I wanted to order some pizza and have it delivered. I had no cash so I wanted to write a check. According to the very polite order taker the address on the check had to match the address of the house AND the address on my id had to match the address on the house. I’m sure the pizza joint had one too many rubber checks and this stringent policy was a result of all the bouncing.

I asked to speak to the manager. When his rather gruff and curt voice came on the line, I told him I had just recently moved to the house (which wasn’t quite true by about four months) and hadn’t had a chance to get my address changed on my id (also not exactly true due to a level of laziness in such matters that borders on criminal), what do I do in such a situation when I wanted to order his pizza?

It must be noted that the pizza from this place is better than most, certainly much better than the two national chain that deliver in our area.

At this point in the conversation, I can tell the man just wanted to get me off the phone and his attitude of “but for the customers, my job would be perfect” oozed out of the phone. But up to this point, I had been quite polite and just wanted to know why he was refusing my custom. Unfortunately, the next thing he said told me that his idea of service was quite low. I quote:

“Well, you have your boundaries and I have mine.”

This is the perfect example of what I’m talking about. Regardless of how little you may think of the customer personally, and I’m sure he didn’t think much of me at all, you strive to be as polite as possible. Why? Because word of mouth can be a powerful thing and in my mind this guy now has a reputation of being a complete prick, someone who doesn’t deserve my custom, much less the custom of anyone else.

For those of you reading this who know me in the flesh, you would expect the conversation to take a predicably downhill turn. I certainly did not disappoint. Let’s just say that neither party in this conversation will be expecting to do business with the other in the near future. Each of us has his reasons and only the gods themselves know which side is just in this matter.

As Mr Wu would say, “cocksuckers!”